The Power of Perspectives

Legal futures round-up

Inspired by the CBA Legal Futures report on Transforming the Delivery of Legal Services in Canada, here’s our regular round-up of noteworthy developments, opinions and news in the legal futures space as a means of furthering discussion about our changing legal marketplace.

To kick things off, here’s an issue law firms are going to have to seriously address: their security weak spots. A recent study reveals that there is a “widespread lack of cybersecurity in law firms" and reports that two-thirds of the 200 responding law firms had reported some sort of cyber breach. Also worrisome, many don’t have cybersecurity insurance.

That report was released as news hit that global law firm DLA Piper suffered a major cyber attack -- yet another a reminder that law firms are a choice target for hackers.

Some firms are taking the threat seriously. International immigration services firm Fragomen announced it is opening an immigration technology innovation lab in Pittsburgh, to be staffed with 40-50 professional – none of them lawyers. The office is going to be focused on software development and cybersecurity.

Mary Ellen Egan writes about the rapid evolution of the job of law librarians, who are spending more and more of their time on business intelligence, marketing-related research and testing electronic platforms and tools for legal and business research.

There have been some interesting moves in the legal publishing world. We interviewed Colin Lachance, CEO of Compass, the new Canadian legal research platform, about bringing legal publisher vLex and Justia together

And LexisNexis announced its acquisition of Ravel Law, with a view to incorporating Ravel’s a legal analytics and visualisation platform. The legal solutions provider has said it is committed to continuing free and open access to Ravel’s digitized collection of US case law.

Still, Gina Passarella in a recent piece writes about the slow pace of change in the legal industry, noting law firms "haven't felt enough pain in their purses to force change,” adding that there is nevertheless a different “buzz around innovation” today.

Mark A. Cohen, jumping off Passarella’s argument says that’s because legal ops professionals in legal departments “are reinventing the way technology and process can be leveraged to streamline the delivery of legal services,” even if, in his view, law firms have missed their opportunity to lead the way in this area.

Also noteworthy, in France the Conseil national des barreaux, a national organization that represents the French bar nationally and internationally, is advocating for allowing outside investors to take a minority stake in law firms.

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National magazine is the official periodical of the Canadian Bar Association and covers the latest trends and developments affecting the legal profession and the practice of law, as well as the latest news regarding the association and its activities. If you have suggestions, ideas or requests concerning this Web site or the magazine, please send us an e-mail at national@cba.org